In Battlefield Redsec's Battle Royale, the Traverser Mark 2, also known as the Marauder, has proven to be too powerful, thanks to its armor and turret. That's why Battlefield Labs is removing the Marauder from Battle Royale and replacing it with other transport vehicles.

Battlefield Labs made the announcement in a brief update, which explained that the decision came down to player feedback and the team's internal metrics. However, the Marauder could return in a future update. The dev team noted that it's looking into adjustments that would allow that to happen without running into the same issues again.

Last month, Battlefield 6 and Redsec Season 2 launched with over 200 game improvements and quality-of-life changes. It also included new maps, weapons, and additional vehicles. However, producer Phil Girette recently acknowledged that the delay between Season 1 and Season 2 hurt Battlefield 6's momentum.

Light on combat, heavy on story, adventure games are such an underrated delight. Fanatical’s Story Rich Adventures Bundle is a celebration of the genre. It includes 17 games, and, like all Fanatical Build Your Own Bundles, the more you add to your cart, the deeper your discount. Pricing starts at three games for $1.65 per key ($4.95 total), but if you add five or more games you'll pay just $1.60 per key, and at seven or more titles, the price per game drops to $1.45. If you add all 17 games to your bundle, you'll pay just $24.65--which is a massive discount compared to the full bundle's $340.78 value.

As for the games on offer, two of the marquee options are Heavy Rain and Beyond Two Souls--which are available as a double pack, meaning you get both games for just one slot in the bundle. These cinematic adventures are polarizing to say the least, but they're worth experiencing, whether you come away loving or hating them. Games by Quantic Dream tend to have high production value, cinematic storytelling, and tell stories that are relatively compact, so you can get through them in about 12-20 hours. Heavy Rain is the story of a bereaved father looking for his son who has gone missing, all while a serial killer is on the loose. Beyond Two Souls sees you take on the role of a psychically gifted young girl who grows into her abilities, and you also get to ride a horse at one point, which is cool.

A cozy meditation on mortality, Old Man’s Journey is a quiet, contemplative adventure game you’ll be thinking about long after you finish it. There’s no dialogue in the game; you just see the story unfold as you take on the role of the Old Man, who receives a letter that prompts him to leave home one day. At its heart, it’s a game about loss, and hope, and the rich texture of a life well-lived. Keep your tissues handy.

God of War: Sons of Sparta is a reasonably decent but not particularly great metroidvania spin-off that suffers from an identity crisis. A prequel set when franchise protagonist Kratos and his brother Deimos were coming of age in the Spartan army, Sons of Sparta lacks the over-the-top action spectacle of the other games in the God of War franchise. As a metroidvania it is middling and at times simply awkward, with a dearth of its own original ideas or excellent execution to liven up the genre. The result is a game that feels confused and muddy, despite a few bright spots.

Sons of Sparta takes place across two distinct time periods in the God of War timeline: an adult Kratos telling the story of his adventure to his daughter Calliope, before the tragic events of the first game earned him the nickname the Ghost of Sparta; and the story itself, which takes place when he's a headstrong but duty-bound teenager just starting to make a name for himself in Spartan warrior trials. That tale involves Kratos and Deimos encountering mythical beasts and monsters and cultists as they search for another missing teen, Vasilis. As the story progresses it becomes an interesting look at a foundational time in Kratos' life, though as a side story it does feel removable from the rest of the canon.

At the beginning, though, Kratos is not a very interesting character to follow at this point in his life. He's too rigid and committed to his duties and the rules. He can frequently be overly pious and condescending toward Deimos. The search for Vasilis carries as much weight as a Scooby Doo mystery--you'll get a clue to go towards a location, search around, and then Kratos realizes that he arrived a few minutes or hours too late. Aw shucks, you just missed him, but maybe he left to go here instead. There aren't many twists and turns; it's just following a wandering character around.

Near the beginning of the year, Ubisoft shared plans to bring a Realism Mode to The Division 2 as part of its 10th anniversary celebration. It's designed to make the game even tougher by removing some of the game's more advantageous features, and it's only sticking around for a short time.

As laid out by the game's developers, Realism Mode is only available through the Warlords of New York expansion. But from today to April 2, that expansion will be open to all players so they can have a chance to experience it themselves.

Realism Mode drops most of the video game conventions like the HUD, the map, and hitmarkers. The combat has also been completely re-balanced, and old strategies like shooting limbs aren't going to as effective in this mode.

The Video Game History Foundation has beaten a copyright troll and is now able to better preserve Cookie's Bustle, a Japanese point-and-click PC adventure game from the 1990s.

Cookie's Bustle is an obscure game that didn't get much attention or preservation following an initial physical print run around its release in 1999. It's considered an "orphan work" without a clear owner, and is exactly the kind of game the Video Game History Foundation likes to preserve. A new blog post on the foundation's website detailed why that process was more complex than usual.

Anytime someone online posted materials related to Cookie's Bustle in recent years, a company called Graceware Inc. filed DMCA takedown notices to remove the content. That's because in 2021, Graceware had claimed copyright ownership and filed trademarks related to Cookie's Bustle. VGHF caught wind of Graceware's aggressive DMCA strategy after they filed one over a VGHF post about obtaining a copy of the game.